As I Sometimes Do
Firstly, one of the appeals that "Thunderbirds" had was it's frequent recourse to massive explosions, which may be the source of Conrad's love of things that go BANG. If a car crashed on "Thunderbirds" then it was no dull matter of metallic crunching and broken glass; no, there would be a tremendous explosion as what was clearly a nuclear-engined family saloon went up in a gigantic fireball. Art!
Just so with any industrial accident that occurred, as you can see from the above. In reality this was a set - let a picture instead paint a thousand words. Art!
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| Disbelief un-suspended |
You can clearly see this is a scale set, with explosive charges of various sizes used to blow up fuel tanks and other refinery infrastructure FORESHADOWING, shot at very high speed so it looks as real as possible when run at normal speed. Not forgetting the fire extinguishers after the cameras stop rolling.
If you've been following us diligently over the past few weeks, then you'll know a real-life version of the "Thunderbirds" oil refinery blaze took place in Modern-day Mordor over August, except these were storage depots and there were two of them, not one. Art!
Atlas fire-bugged
The Rostov Oblast became known to memes across the globe as 'Roastov' and 'Rostove', which was hilarious if a trifle tasteless.
Well, well, (oil) well, who is this but 'Chris0_wiki' on Twitter, who compiled a Tweet (sue me, Elong Tusk, sue me!) listing the consequences of what is infinitely more than a scale set with firecrackers.
The depot hit near Kamensky was the 'Atlas' depot, hence my Ayn Rand reference there. We know that 3 tanks there were completely destroyed. The formal title of the Proletarsk depot was 'Flagman', and we know 15 tanks were completely destroyed, with another 3 badly damaged. Art!
Each of the tanks pictured, bar 8 smaller ones, has a capacity of 5,000 tons and all were full when the Ukrainian drones hit the site. Thus, Atlas lost 15,000 tons of fuel, and Flagman lost 90,000 tons. These are conservative figures as heat damage may have ruined a LOT more oil.
I think we need to stand back and allow Gerry to name this Intro - "City Of Fire"? That'll do nicely. About $78 millions-worth of fuel went up in both fires, not to mention the cost of the destroyed infrastructure, which is a lot harder to replace than a collection of model kits hot-glued together. Art!
Is that Flagman, Atlas or the Supermarionation studios?
Further to the above, these fuel depots supplied the Ruffian's Southern Military District, and there are no other facilities in the Rostov Oblast that can substitute for these badly-damaged ones. Ooopsie. Might have to rail in oil products from elsewhere at greater expense and logistical complexity. The rules and regulations about constructing underground fuel storage tanks have - what a coincidence! - just been relaxed, meaning that Flagman, at least, may be replaced by an underground tank site. Which process is neither quick nor cheap; Flagman took 15 years to construct only to be destroyed in ten days, and Ruffia doesn't have the money or manpower to replace the giant black smear at Proletarsk with viable underground storage.
If 'twere up to Conrad, I think I'd choose a different "Thunderbirds" title: "Day of Disaster". Art!
Flagg-man. Close enough.
I do have a fair number of these comics sitting in my Comic Mountain and may dig them out at some point in the near future. So there.
More Of Mules
Hey, if the incomparable Peter Caddick-Adams can write about them, the least I can do is pass on the info! Art?
Ol' Pete has a positive salad of qualifications after his name. There is another picture of him wearing a Brodie-pattern helmet like this one, but grinning even more broadly and looking utterly bonkers. Doubtless I shall discover it two hours after posting all this stuff.
ANYWAY if we go back to calendar dates, Italy had officially departed the Axis as of September 1943, when it then hovered between being a neutral and joining the Allies.
What sealed the deal was the acceptance into Allied service of native Italian mule-train companies, who were highly experienced in managing mules.
Don't laugh! A mule is not a motor vehicle. Recall "Four Years On The Western Front" where the author dealt with horses for three years solid. They have individual temperaments and need treating accordingly. Art!
'Salmerie' in action
Italian mule-train drivers from the Calabria division were thus the first Italian soldiers to serve under Allied command, and pretty fair soldiers they were, too. You can tell those in the picture above are in Allied service because there's a British Bren Gun Carrier in the background.
Our Journey With Bernie
(Wrightson). The saga of the FPG trading cards from 1993 continues, in the "Master of the Macabre" collection. Don't forget, as I have mentioned previously, that these cards came in random collections bought by punters, so you can practically guarantee there wouldn't be any sequential runs. Art!
70 minutes to create this? I wonder if that includes pencilling as well, or if Ol' Bern went straight to creating the end product. Our subject matter here seems to be 'late' in the sense of 'deceased' or otherwise 'Three years after being buried I remembered I had a library book to return".
More fool they. Oldham Libraries don't charge for late returns.
The Fallout Continues
I'm talking about the South Canadian Department Of Justice and their revelation that a tranche of social media influencers were taking Ruffian money to traduce Ukraine or promote Donold Trump.
As 'Dylan Burns' on Twitter mirrored Conrad, none of these reprehensible traitors have offered to disgorge their dirty money. Art!
Lauren Chen had been one of the prime movers behind this plot, which I will have to take at face value as I'd never heard of her, not running in right-wing MAGA circles.
Welllllll her Youtube channel has now been deleted. She has also been fired from 'Blaze TV' because 'Hires and promotes traitors!' is not a good look for any company. I have no doubt that she's spewing all sorts of excuses and reasons and accusations on social media to anyone still willing to listen, but she ought to be more diligently pursuing a deal with the DoJ to dob in her associates in return for less jail time. Remember Sad Bankman Fried?
He tried the 'Not Guilty' path in court, when his previous associates had already pleaded 'Very Very Guilty' and threw him under a succession of buses. I can see this constellation of crooks doing their best to be last on the pavement.
No
Where on earth did this entry in my Youtube ever come from? Art!
What on Earth? Or off it?
Conrad has no experience of playing golf apart from caddying for my dad back in the Eighties. I don't post about it, nor golf players, and wouldn't know a niblick from a putting iron.
WHERE DID THIS COME FROM!
Finally -
I've been re-watching 'Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons' and the body count is already high. As mentioned elsewhere, if this had been live action it would never have been made, let alone broadcast! Killer zombies from Mars, explosions - see Intro - and glamourous female combat fighter pilots. We may will come back to this.
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